


Inward Lens

by J_C_D



Series: Kannadi Albedo [5]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Canon Compliant, During Canon, F/F, Gen, Neurodiversity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-18
Updated: 2021-02-18
Packaged: 2021-03-13 08:22:37
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,257
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29523591
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/J_C_D/pseuds/J_C_D
Summary: Kannadi deals with an increasingly difficult brain.[Occurs somewhere in the background of post-Heavensward.]
Series: Kannadi Albedo [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2168502
Kudos: 3





	Inward Lens

“I think I’ll be going, Lieutenant. Is there… anything _else_ you need?”

First Lieutenant Kannadi Albedo looked up from her writing, confused. The last of her subordinates, Lost Wax, politely loomed over her desk, apparently showing deference by the way she leaned forward.

“Ah.” Kannadi returned to the paragraph. “Everything is put away, then?”

“Yes ma’am, every piece of every specimen categorized.” Lost scratched between her collarbones, an easy task given the openness of her shirt. “Your new squadron did well to mind where their blades went. I can tell when someone’s good with their hands.”

Kannadi expressed on paper her sincere anticipation of further shared coordination efforts with the Clan Hunt representative in Ishgard. “That is well,” she said. “I will pass along your praise. Have a pleasant evening.”

“I’d hoped I would, ma’am. I’ll just be downstairs…”

“Very well. Thank you.”

Kannadi continued writing, because it was important. Twenty-five words later, departing footsteps intruded on her focus and she almost successfully tuned them out. The rhythm suggested haste, but on the seventeenth step, which would have put the source just out of sight on the stairs, the sound stopped, punctuated a sigh, and continued more slowly. No doubt signifying recollection of the unnecessary expedience now that work and home were so close.

Kannadi had been against the new apartments on personal grounds. She didn’t select her estate’s position in the Goblet to be _near_ people. But then she suspected her subordinates might benefit from housing more elaborate and closer to work than barracks or inn rooms, so she bought each of them space in the Sultana’s Breath. She suspected they might appreciate that. They did. So much, in fact, some of them took to staying after hours. Interrupting her schedule. Burdening her attentive senses. Kannadi hid the stress well.

With the letter completed fully two days ahead of schedule, Kannadi took her desk wand and flicked her wrist at the crystal-wedge lighting. It dimmed to darkness as she left the upstairs office.

Downstairs, Lost poured tea with uncommon haste.

“Lieutenant.” She said, smiling for some reason. “Miss Albedo. I just, er, thought I’d have some tea before I went home. There’s plenty left.”

Kannadi assessed. Two cups were prepared, mulled tea heavy on the cinnamon by the smell of them. Alongside slices of pineapple cake occupying two tiny plates.

“The market has been good for it lately,” said Kannadi, “so buying more is nothing. Thank you for your concern over our supplies, though. Is there anything else the unit needs? Grett can run it through procurement.” She smiled, attempting levity, “The apartments cut into my personal tea fund.”

Lost laughed more loudly than was necessary. Kannadi flinched.

“I’ll bet!” She said, wiping a nonexistent tear. “And I speak for all of your staff when I say we’re forever grateful. It certainly beats a Saint Coinach tent.”

“I would hope so.”

“Have you yet been in the apartments? They’re a bit spare to start, but I’ve outfitted mine quite well already. Good books, good bed, good kitchenette…”

“I’m glad you find it agreeable.” Kannadi walked past, a whole head shorter than her. “More so than a workplace, surely. You ought not feel bound to my kitchen. Please don’t let my presence keep you from your home.”

Kannadi activated her orchestrion, selected a gentle tune of pianos and strings and set it to repeat. She took two steps left to the aquarium, where the decorative koi she’d named Herodotus and Thucydides swam continuous languid orbits of each other. They never seemed to react to the music. Kannadi wondered what sort of instruments might elicit a clearer reaction in fish as she knelt and opened the aquarium’s tiny cabinet. She retrieved a small glass container of fish food, but noticed a fuzzy lump of former food pellet already among the substrate. Given the rate of dissolution, someone else had fed the fish off schedule.

Kannadi turned to where she left her adjutant. “Did—”

The slammed front door cut off her question. The sound of a lock turning raised another. Why would she leave for the evening so quickly when the tea and cakes remained untouched? Clearly she changed her mind, but that was no good reason to let resources go stale.

Kannadi, abhorring waste, slid the slices back into the cake. She poured one cup back in the kettle – wrought by the hands of the realm’s most irritating smith – and took the kettle and the other cup downstairs.

 _Now_ she was home. The basement would have had more books if she didn’t need at least a little bit of floor space. She set the tea on the table beside her couch and sat herself on the left cushion.

“Calcobrena?” She called.

Brown rocks and a very thick nail tumbled and crashed down the cold chimney and assembled themselves into a tiny golem. The construct’s yellow mineral eyes watched her mistress, ready to serve.

“Please bring firewood.”

Calcobrena scrambled vertically out of sight. She – Kannadi had arbitrarily assigned her gender – had no brain, only stone and magic, but golems stored memory in the aether that composed their very being. Most of it was taken up by commands and objects, but the little rock construct kept them straight in her equivalent of a mind.

Kannadi sat. She sipped her tea. She listened to diminishing scrabbling stone scrape the edges of the music flowing down the stairs.

Kannadi was alone. Alone, in her scheduled workless time before it was time for bed. It would take time for the golem to fetch the fuel.

What would she like to do?

Kannadi thought.

Well, she could read. She had so many bookshelves, they made a hallway. But there was nothing in her library she hadn’t read. She could remember it all, every word, if she had enough cause and time to think.

She could make something! That was an option. Her goldsmithing bench was as functional as ever. But she wanted for nothing, and outfitting her squadron with accessories was to be saved for achievement, to incentivize good work. She could craft them ahead of time, perhaps. Save time later.

But save time for what?

More work, of course. Life was a work in progress.

By making her life work, by regimenting her time, she was maximizing limited resources (many of which, yes, she was born into) and distributing them, in a carefully measured way, to others. Living efficiently, and _living efficiency_. Few people indeed had managed life as well as she had. Knowing that brought contentment. Few people had learned as much, done as much, seen as much, and had as much comfort to show for it. And to balance the scales, she paid back that comfort in more work. She had won at life and she wasn’t even thirty. She was content. She was thoroughly content.

“But is contentment happiness?”

Kannadi started at the voice, then irritably sipped her tea. “Interrupting my thoughts is uncouth, Lens.”

Light grew and knotted between her and the fireplace. Faceless aetheric sapience manifested as quietly as a candle. Its little limbs and wings ended in flamelike points. The _anima_ , the soul of Kannadi’s masterwork weapon, built by her own combat experience and the peerless craftsmanship of that muttering lush Gerolt, hovered before her. The anima had grown strong lately, strong enough to project itself all the way from the staff Kannadi kept in her bedroom dresser.

“Many apologies,” it said, its gentle voice genderless. “But the question remains.”

“And I have every right to decline an answer.”

“You yourself tasked me with querying any psychological stress in the event of its occurrence, until a solution is identified. I would be remiss to ignore your past instructions.”

“I am not distressed.” Kannadi finished her cup and turned to pour more.

Lens followed her line of sight, its ethereal form clipping through the table. “Madam, I was born of your very aether. My life was kindled by your actions, your experiences, your _will_. Yours. To some small non-zero degree, I _am_ you. I can tell what you are feeling, I can tell it is negative, and I attribute it to your state of life.”

“You mistake the source,” Kannadi poured. “I simply dislike interruptions.”

Four split quarters of a firewood log fell down three stories of chimney and crashed into the iron log-rest hard enough to bounce. The volume was terrific and made Kannadi jolt.

She took a handkerchief and dabbed the volume of spilled tea on the table.

“Is contentment happiness?” Lens asked again.

“It is surely a form,” Kannadi muttered, wadded the cloth and tossed it on the logs. “ _Dis_ content is a form of _un_ happiness, after all.”

“The negative does not prove the positive, Madam.”

“It ought to, logically.”

“Then, logically, are you happy?”

Kannadi stared at the unlit fireplace. It was cool, free of soot, occupied by unspent fuel.

She took a wand from the table’s single drawer, pointed it at the logs and set them alight.

“Everything is fine the way it is,” she said.

“But are you happy?”

“Must I be?” Kannadi snapped. “I am content. I would not change. I dare not change.”

“Why not, Madam?”

“Because…” she put the wand back in its place, then nudged it to its _exact_ place. “You know my thoughts when they are loud enough, Lens, but you do not know my memories.”

“This is true, Madam. Please elucidate.”

Kannadi glared at the annoyingly helpful spirit.

“I am sorry if I annoy you, Madam, but I am glad to help.”

“Ever since Dalamud,” Kannadi grudgingly began, “I can remember more and more.”

“About what?”

“ _Everything_ ,” Kannadi groaned. “All of my experience, not merely the high or valuable points. Graduation, alongside the number of stitches in the upholstery of this couch. Doing the impossible, wound up with the exact dimensions of the third bar of soap purchased this year after eighty-four seconds of accumulated use. _Everything_ my senses have witnessed.”

Kannadi held her forehead and continued, “Even of times _before_ the false moon descended, back to the dawn of my awareness. Things I’d forgotten, oceans of unnecessary data points, from scratches on book covers in elementary school to the shape of clouds on a Windsday afternoon walking the markets with Mother. I remember everything better and better. More, more, and _yet more_ irrelevant lines in my life history becoming clear as bells to me.”

Lens floated closer. “Is that bad?”

“ _I’m knowing myself too much_.” Kannadi tossed herself horizontal on the couch. “It’s like. It’s like the border of my own soul is clear as glass and I can see through all sides at once. The increasing perfection of my memory taxes me so, forever demanding my attention, and yet it is a power of immense practical value! For instance? Already I’ve begun locating long-term patterns in monster migrations, impossible for one mind to identify without my knowledge base and correlative capacity. Already I’ve walked in and out of Mhach’s most dire defenses unscathed, for every onze of practice I’ve ever performed in my _life_ stacks in my very bones like bricks rather than sand. I am more usefully functional to myself and others than I’ve ever been. My own mind burdens my ability to focus, but I dare not meddle with it, lest I,” she shuddered, “ _waste_ such ability and become useless. So I must keep it.”

“At great interpersonal cost.”

The burning wood crackled and fell into itself.

“What?” Kannadi eyed her anima askance.

“Madam,” Lens floated overhead, “I observe this dwelling while you keep my shell in safe storage. I watch, and I listen, and I find that you only seem to understand words.”

Kannadi watched her anima under tightly knitted brows for several seconds. “And?”

“Your focus neglects other methods of communication.”

“What, writing?” Kannadi frowned. “That still uses words. Words are language. We’re using words right now. We’re communicating. I understand you.”

“I do not believe you do, Madam. Consider a new question. How did your biologist feel when she left that tea behind?”

Kannadi blinked. “Thirsty?”

“How did she feel when she left the office?”

“Tired, I suppose.”

“She attempted to say more through her actions, Madam.”

“Then why didn’t she? Surely I wouldn’t have missed her intent. I can remember individual grass blades in the lawn.”

“But do you see the lawn, Madam?”

Kannadi looked at her anima like it had grown five heads. “What?”

Lens floated a slow orbit around the couch. “You see the parts, Madam, but you do not see the whole. The facts reflect within your mind perfectly, but the reality escapes your notice.”

“The whole is _made_ of parts, Lens. Reality is _made_ of facts, as a lawn is made of grass. How can I possibly fail to see an entirety when that is _exactly_ what I see?”

“Then do you see a way to solve your loneliness?”

Kannadi listened to the looping music on its reliable range of notes. The fire crackled, discordantly. Lens dipped closer, face to facelessness.

“Do you hear only the notes or the whole song, Madam?”

“The song,” said Kannadi in a small voice, “though I identify each note.”

“Good. A solution is still possible. Consider now, Madam. Are your memories only a collection of moments in time… or a life?”

Kannadi considered.

She lay still and read her memories. She skimmed. She delved. She blazed through trees in search of the forest. She dug through sand in search of the beach. She flew to find the sky but found only lift and turbulence and vapor condensation amid gaseous mixture. Variables, not systems. Events, not life.

There was no whole. Anywhere.

Her senses reflected everything and her mind absorbed it all – no, no, this was surely too much for one mind. Her mind had overfilled and – and her _soul,_ it had to be, her _soul_ had absorbed the spillage. Memory stored in aether, growing hotter and hotter, melting her into too-fine mirror on a too-large existence. That is, if a static series of facts could even be _called_ existence…

“Lens?” Her whisper trembled.

Lens hovered to her ear. “Yes, Madam?”

“Memory can be expressed as a form of aether. The sort of aether of which you are composed.”

“Yes?”

She reached up and gently took the fingerless pointed nubs that were Lens’s hands.

“I need you to do something very important for me.”

#

Lost Wax arrived at seven-thirty to prepare the unit’s morning meals whenever they would trickle in before nine. Everyone under Kannadi’s command appreciated the hours she kept. Her schedule was adamantine, yes, but it wasn’t ungodly, unlike less fortunate units in the Flames.

She opened the door to find her commander cooking. Kannadi’s other personal retainers, the roegadyn duo Naur and Black Fish, were already half through breakfast.

“Good morning, Fyril,” said Kannadi, apron and all, without turning her head from her sizzling pan. “My culinary skills have gone unpracticed too long, so I thought to try my hand at omelets. Would you like this one? My next can be for me.”

Lost Wax, birthname _Fyrilwhas,_ closed her slack mouth. She made eye contact with Naur, who shrugged.

“Oh dear!” Kannadi shook her hands dry. “I’m completely off schedule, aren’t I?”

Lost made eye contact with Black Fish, who shrugged as well, just as stumped.

Kannadi hurried past her and trotted upstairs without waiting for a reply. “Swarfhisk brought _dozens_ of specimens overnight, would you kindly come up and measure them to check for outliers?”

“Yes, Lieutenant,” Lost Wax trudged after her, the surprise of her boss’s pep smothered by the expected drudgework of categorization. Last time it involved calipers, scales, and ninety-nine hippogryph claws.

She entered the office to find Kannadi already reading her first newspaper of the day. That was normal.

The colorful explosion of orange lilies and bright goldenrods in the vase blocking the specimen drawers, however, wasn’t.

Kannadi successfully kept her eyes on the page.

“I’m told you like warm colors. I expect you to scrutinize each and every specimen, Fyrilwhas. And take them home with you.”

Lost Wax blushed like a candle. “Yes ma’am.”

#

Kannadi retired to her library that evening and chose a mystery novel. Log segments crashed down the chimney. She lit them and settled to read.

Lens flared into visibility at her side.

“Success, Madam?”

“Success,” Kannadi smiled. “The breadth of my memory’s strokes are actually wider than hairs now. So to speak.”

“This is well,” said Lens, in a softer and steadier version of Kannadi’s own voice. “I was very careful to assimilate only what you specified during our four hundred eleven minutes of memory-abridgement last night.”

“For which I am immensely grateful.” Kannadi put her book aside. “I can think so much clearer now without the dirt and smudges of irrelevant information on my mind’s glass.”

“Ah. Figurative language. Correct?”

“Correct.” Kannadi sat forward. “I once thought this Echo phenomenon first elucidated in Augurelt’s essay to the Alliance failed to promote extemporal perception in me due to some flaw in my psychological composition. I _should_ have received it in a predictable way, but didn’t. But now I think it didn’t fail the neuroaetheric reaction at all. It simply forced the waveform on an atypical mind, which reacted in its own way. A square peg entered a star-shaped hole and produced a star-shaped peg.”

Lens floated before the fire. “Figuratively put, Madam.”

Kannadi smiled. “There was nothing wrong with me. Just difference. But more than that,” she excitedly tapped her temple, “the long-term effects indicated that the mortal brain retains far more information than can be believed! The Echo can’t possibly have affected me backwards in time, otherwise I’d have experienced it in my youth, which I didn’t, which leaves me with one conclusion.”

She clapped once, her eyes shining with discovery. “In some dark dusty corner of the mind, we retain everything we forget, everything we abridge. Do you see, Lens? No experience is truly lost. The altered aether in my system not only absorbed more and more irrelevant data, it lit _what had been there all along_. Lit it to blinding.”

“So to speak?”

“So to speak. My mirror on the world was filled edge to edge with glare, until… until your assistance, Lens.” She reached out and held Lens’s handless arms. Her fingers felt warmer. “Thank you. You may well have saved my life.”

Lens withdrew as if in embarrassment. “Yes, Madam. I remain able to abridge your unnecessary memory-minutiae upon request.”

“Yes,” Kannadi folded her hands in her lap, “I suspect I’ll need you to do so until I can devise some way to throttle the flow from my body’s aetheric memory storage to my mind… but enough about me! How are you feeling now?”

“Powerful, Madam,” said Lens with confidence. “Absorbing your data-aether has been a great boon. I have tested the extent of my projectable cognizance and determined that it is as far as the Breath’s market board. Wind crystals are at a twenty-six day low, incidentally, and garlic is up nine gil a ponze.”

“Good to know.”

“And you’ve worn that housecoat a cumulative total of one hundred twenty hours and forty-seven minutes. If you would like to craft another, then as of my last check fourteen minutes ago twinthread was at—”

“Thank you, Lens,” Kannadi kindly stopped them – _them_ , no longer _it_. “If I require additional information, or any further reminders, I know just who to ask.”

Lens cocked their faceless head.

“I mean you, Lens.”

“Ah.”


End file.
